As a young teenager I was an aspiring athlete but unfortunately skill and injury both got in the way, so instead I decided that I if I wasn’t on the pitch, I’d like to be on the pitch side and that really drew me to sports medicine.

I’ve worked in a number of different sporting roles in the past with international soccer teams, intercounty GAA, European Tour golf, as well as rowing and rugby. Currently I work in the Sports Ireland Institute as well, which basically involves working with track and field Irish athletic team, so I’m part of the Olympic Federation of Ireland traveling team, with Team Ireland for Paris.

I have a specific interest in bone stress injuries, factors that can increase bone stress injuries include strength and biomechanics changes, endocrine and hormonal deficiencies, bone health issues so it’s important to take a quite a large, broad investigative net really to try and find out exactly why it’s happened.

We’re lucky here at UPMC to have a full team of people and that can help with management options regardless of the injury. We have access to orthopaedic surgeons to neurosurgeons to Radiologists to specialist physios to Sport Science as well as strength and conditioning coaches, that can help with the issue once we identify it accurately.

Sports Science has exploded in the recent years and I think it’s important really to not get lost in the numbers and to really focus on the patient or the athlete. I use fitness wearables quite a lot, for tracking illness and injury recovery. Technology as well in terms of Imaging, we’re really lucky here at UPMC Sports Surgery Clinic to have such a phenomenal team of musculoskeletal radiologists that have been a great help to both the Team Ireland Olympic athletes as well as the patients here at UPMC.

Quite unique here in that we have such a wide ranging team with so many unique skill sets, we do see that in in elite sporting settings but we rarely see it in settings that are available to the public so it’s energizing to be able to work in such setting. We have a number of elite athletes that will come when they’re injured, to our clinic and attend on a daily basis at times for more specialist rehab. Wouldn’t be uncommon in the waiting room to see a number of athletes, recognizable athletes,  there has been professional rugby players from France attend here, professional Australian football league players, professional golfers, as well as professional Premier League soccer players.

With a lot of elite athletes, they have huge muscle mass in their hamstrings so MRI can be really helpful to identify the exact structure that’s injured, that helps us to guide rehab and helps us to give the athlete a little bit better prognosis about the return to play times. Two of the physios here are currently carrying out PhDs in hamstring rehab and it’s really important for us to be able to guide rehab with the best evidence. The athletes that I have been working with very closely over the last number of years a few in particular, that have had a number of illnesses and injuries, that I would hope to think that I’ve helped them with seeing them perform to their best on the world stage would be the most satisfying moment for me.

As a sports and exercise medicine physicians we not only care for elite athletes we care for everyone. For a recreational runner, for general advice I suppose in terms of if you’re new to training don’t try to increase your training load or training intensity too quickly take things quite gradually, I suppose important as well to not just focus on your running but also work on your strength. Listen to the niggles don’t run through injuries and seek help early when you do have injuries and issues, there are people there to help with that. Physical inactivity is a really big issue worldwide so I suppose sports and exercise medicine has a larger role to play not just for elite sport but also for everyone out there.